Thunder and Lightning
by crisskisses
Summary: Between the cool months of no contact, Peeta comforts Katniss and Haymitch when they confront the horrors in their mind of their previous Games. After bonding, Haymitch promises Katniss something that he thinks will save her sanity. She never hears him.


_**A little drabble, Katniss POV, between The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.**_

_**WARNING: Tenses and POV's go amuck in this fic, if you're a grammar geek you could be offended.**_

_Thunder and Lightning_

_I see thunder,_  
_I see lightning._  
_More everyday,_  
_The world gets frightening._  
_And in this sorry soul of mine,_  
_I hope the essence is that of time._  
_I hope I'll shake away this rain._  
_I hope I'll shake away the pain._  
_Because of thunder._  
_Because of lightning._  
_The Games are over,_  
_But the danger is heightening._

I hear the "clap clap" of the thunder in the gray skies. Gloomy, is the word I would use to describe it. Hearing it under the roof of the new home, _my_ new home, in Victors Village makes it sound somehow more...menacing. The sound echoes around the emptiness that surrounds me. My mother and Prim are asleep; even if they were awake I wouldn't bother them with my petty problems.

I was alive. More than anyone could ever ask for who went through my situation. Not only was I alive, but I had managed to keep someone else from the arena alive with me. But maybe, being alive was the problem.

The Capitol wanted revenge. President Snow wanted me dead. My mother wanted forgiveness. My departed father would've wanted me safe. Gale, just wanted me. Peeta wanted me too. I am trapped and I can admit it.

Who understands me now? The question is hard to answer. Prim understands me, but I could never tell her some of the dark creatures that wonder grotesquely around my mind. Glimmer disintegrating in my bare hands, Cato, battered and bloody and battling the mutts that mauled him to death, a little girl just like Prim who was lost forever because I didn't get there in time. Prim would understand, if I told her. But I would never put her through that.

Only two people in this vicinity can really get it, and I can only talk to one of them without feeling ashamed.

I crossed the lot over to another, similar house in Victor's Village. I enter without knocking, with my key, the door is always locked. I wake the man who's sleeping, he's startled with his knife. But he doesn't ask when he sees the tears in my eyes. He knows what is haunting me, and he's haunted too.

Without a word I walk with Haymitch Abernathy out through his front porch, the stench is unbearable inside the mansion. It's odd, the understanding between us two, that no words could've helped us.

I decide we should walk farther, but whilst walking through the grass my foot snags on a plant of some kind. I fall. I don't have the will power to get back up. So I just let more tears fall. Haymitch sits next to me, not caring that the grass is wet and the lightning still flashes throughout the sky. After a while, I ask him something.

"Does it ever get better?"

His one syllable answer crushes me because I know that Haymitch would never lie to me.

"No."

A few houses down, a boy, Peeta Mellark, was watching the scene. All he sees is two figures slumped on the grass in a lightning storm. He recognizes the smaller as the girl he loves but who doesn't feel it too. He recognizes the other as the man that kept him alive, by default of helping the girl.

Peeta Mellark sprints across the two lots and sprawls across the water strewn grass with the other too.

I am crying hard now and I don't want him to see, weakness. He does and he wraps his arms around my shivering body. It reminds me of a blanket I had when I was younger, my mother's when she was upper class. In time, I forgot about it, but every time something was really, really wrong I would pull it out again and it would make everything better. But I never betrayed the blanket, like I betrayed this boy who had every right to hate me.

"What did you say to her?" Peeta calls angrily to Haymitch.

"Nothing! I just told her how it is. I just told her that no matter how hard she tries, the Games never go away. You've got to accept it and move on!"

He's talking to both of us now.

"Yes," says Peeta. "We will always remember the Games but that doesn't mean we always have to be scared now, it doesn't mean we have to sleep with a knife or try not to burden our families with memories. Haymitch, you came out of the Games with no one. Katniss has me. And you have me too! We can all get through this together!"

We're all crying now and laughing and shoving each other and trying to help each other up but we're so slippery from the rain this proves a challenge. With the last loud clap of thunder we decide its time to turn in.

I know we won't forget this but we'll pretend it never happened. Peeta will go back to politely ignoring me, Haymitch will go back to his liquor, and me, I don't know where I'll go back to. As I'm about to cross my own front porch I hear Haymitch calling something out to me, from two houses down. I didn't here what he said and really wanted to get inside to the warmth and not get electrocuted, so I just smiled and nodded.

It's probably a good thing that Katniss Everdeen never heard what Haymitch Abernathy said that day. He told her that the one thing she could now be sure of, was that she wouldn't have to face the arena again. How very wrong he was.

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